


Chunky Bracelets

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Winx Club
Genre: Bullying, College, Gen, High School, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28947276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: Icy reflects on her past; decidedly, it is better to do the victimizing than be the victim.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Chunky Bracelets

Sometimes the face reflected in the glass isn’t the one she wants. Sometimes the face in the mirror seems unnatural, like it shouldn’t be. And maybe that’s because it is. It was different some time ago...a long time ago now. 

Icy rummages through her drawer and finds her favorite eyeshadow, her mascara, and her eyeliner. She draws it on thick and winged, accents her lashes, and adds a soft tint to her lips. Sometimes she chooses black or a deep navy blue, but today she is feeling for something lighter. Something like first frost on the grass. 

She fixes her hair into it’s high ponytail and accents it with diamonds, some faux and some real. 

Her work is done. 

She is nothing like she was back then. 

And she should be glad for it. There was nothing to like about her back then. Not her weird interests, not her awkward personality, and certainly not her looks--the way she dressed, her unkept, unwashed hair. Those ridiculous glasses and those painful braces. 

She taps her eyeliner pencil against her chin; she could probably make it work now. The outfit anyhow. She thinks that her style of dress wouldn’t have been so terrible had it not clashed with whatever the hell had been going on with her face and personality. 

Chunky studded bracelets clamped over blue and black arm warmers that fit too loosely around her arms paired with a ridiculously oversized muscle tank top--she can’t remember which band logo it had boasted. Ripped skinny jeans--they would have been anyhow if they weren’t so baggy on her--tucked into studded combat boots. 

Yes, she could make that work now. 

But they didn’t sit well with braces, and glasses, and tangled hair. They were worn even worse on someone who stuttered through every conversation. Someone who rambled on about stupid things like snowglobe collections, famous brooms used by famous witches, and bands that no one else cared about.

She runs the comb through her hair until it is silky and immaculate. Until she has worked any trace of that person out with the knots. She doesn’t think about that person often. She tries to think none of her at all. Even still, after so long, and even in private solitude, it brings color to her pale cheeks. 

Icy had been such an easy target, she doesn’t blame the lot of them. She wasn’t their favorite; their favorite was a short chubby girl with awful hand-eye coordination and a habit of stumbling over her own feet. But she was a good second. 

They had many names for her but mostly she was a poser. A wannabe. An abomination to the punk-rock scene. 

And her lyrics were just as absurd. Solstice had made that clear enough when she snagged her notebook and read them all out loud. 

_ “Sing for us, Icy!” She shouted. “We want a concert!” _

She did. 

She isn’t sure what she thought she would accomplish. Maybe she thought that she would have been a phenomenal singer, that she would have showed them all. And maybe she would have if she hadn’t been red-faced and anxious. Her song was shaky and off key. 

She never sang again. 

Never wanted to. 

For a time she unclasped the studded bracelets and swapped her skinny jeans for plain blue jeans. She traded her tank tops for oversized plaid sweaters in a soft baby blue. Somehow that made things worse.

And of course that did. She was no longer a wannabe but a full blown dork. She supposes that at least the style had fit the person. 

She picks through her closet for something to wear. She isn’t sure if she wants to go for the pastel goth aesthetics or something darker, something old school--batcave maybe. But then she’d have to break out the hairspray and style it all over again.

She transferred schools after that year. When they started throwing things at her and crafting little ornaments to hang in her hair she had requested the transfer. Her requests went ignored until she got careless--until her sleeve fell back and they found the scars. 

She runs her fingers over them. Where they would be if she hadn’t tattooed over them. If she can’t see them, then they aren’t there. If they aren’t there then she never had a reason to put them there. If she never had a reason to put them there then she was never anything but suave and cool, smooth and confident. 

The school that she was transferred to was smaller. Private. It wasn’t even in her home realm. She tried many styles then; one week she was preppy, the next she tried for something more sporty, and the week after that was whatever everyone else was wearing. 

And then she settled on simply being a punk-rock poser again. At least that took little effort and acting. 

There is something poetic about that, she knows.

She settles for pastel goth today, it goes well with her hair. She holds the dress against her body. Her elegant, slender body. There is a soft shimmer to her skin. Her skin has always had a shimmer to it. She studies the mirror again. Her cheeks are sculpted just as elegantly, her eyes are framed with makeup instead of glasses. Her hair falls over her shoulder in long, groomed waves. 

She has a pretty face. 

She likes to think that it is well earned.

She has earned her right to look down on the frizzy-haired and the bespectacled. She has earned her right to mock fareries that are too fat for their wings and witches that are skinnier than their broomsticks. She has earned her right to torment those who need to get themselves together. 

She is glamorous. She has status. She has earned her right…

And yet she feels hollow.

Fake.

It is a nagging and persistent itch that is ever present each time she opens her mouth to let one of those loathsome pixies know that they are weak. She is fake. It is all a lie.

She tugs her dress on and steps out into the hallway. 

“Oh perfect, you’re just on time!” Stormy greets. 

“We were just reminding Mirta that she doesn’t belong here.” Darcy adds.

The girl is cornered. Icy rolls her eyes. The girl makes it too easy. Laughably easy. She is wearing Lucy’s arm warmers. She squeezes her eyes shut and covers her ears with her hands. Her fingernails are painted in an alternating red and black. 

“She doesn’t need the reminder, she already knows.” Icy shrugs. “Don’t you, Mirta?”

“Y-yes.”

Icy rolls her eyes. “Then what are you doing here? This is a school for witches not, whatever the hell you are.”

“She’s a fairy in a witch’s clothing.” Stormy remarks. 

“A poser.” Darcy comments, quirking a perfectly penciled brow.

A poser…

Icy folds her arms over her chest.

She doesn’t think much of it throughout the day. She doesn’t think of it at all, really. Not until she makes it back to the dorm. 

And then she doesn’t stop thinking about it.

And the more she thinks about it, the more she thinks that she had made a mistake. She isn’t sure which kind or when exactly she had made it. But when she stands in front of the mirror and scrubs her eye makeup away, she is damn near certain that she has.

Sometimes when she stares for too long at her bare face she sees an awkward girl with glasses and braces and messy hair.

And sometimes when she stares for much too long, she misses that person. That kinder person. That lanky girl with the arm warmers, studded bracelets, and oversized shirt. 

That stupid girl who--rather poorly--played the guitar in a stupid garage band.

“Hey.” Darcy leans in the door frame. “We’re going to the bar. You coming?” 

“Let me reapply my makeup.”

“We still have to get ready too.” Stormy shrugs.

Icy wanders back to her closet. 

To the very back of it; he tugs on the arm warmers, clamps on those chunky studded bracelets. 

For old time’s sake, she tells herself.


End file.
